Goldman insiders say the bank is making a push into the equity derivatives space, as witnessed by an array of hires, mostly at executive director level, on both sides of the Atlantic. Few have been publicized.

On Wall Street, Goldman's biggest new hire is Spencer Cross, the former head of equity index volatility trading at Deutsche Bank. Cross began his equity derivatives career at Lehman in 2005. FINRA confirms that he left Deutsche in November 2017 and joined Goldman Sachs on January 25th this year.

In Europe, Goldman's recent recruits include Guillaume Paulhac, whom it hired last month from consultancy firm Roland Berger for equity derivatives sales in Paris. We already flagged Paulhac's arrival as indicative of a possible build-out of a Brexit-related Parisian sales team. At the same time, Goldman has been hiring traders in London: it quietly recruited quant strategist Thomas Giovachini from BNP Paribas' Paris office to work in December.

Giovachini's arrival in London was preceded by that of Nick Baltas from UBS as head of quantitative research for systematic trading strategies in October. Leaf Wade, also formerly of UBS, turned up in Goldman's London equity derivatives sales team in September.